Favorite ThingsJuly - August

Artists

Prabin BadhiaAt this point in my practice, I am involved in creating art that has subjects which are entangled with my current thoughts, energy, and time. I approach my piece with no regard for any pre-condition. Sometimes I have a lot of things to tell, in limited time, Or, I have little to say, with plenty of times. I enjoy the structure, the muscles, and movement, bending, twisting, and turning of the body forms.My subject has always been primarily the human form. My figures are not historically based nor do they have a social context. They are purely form; they are without telling of where they are from and why there are there, and when they are. The ideology behind this is neither constructive nor destructive. It’s just as it is. Website: prabinbadhia.com

Kim BassI have lived and worked in California all of my life, and graduated from the University of CA East Bay Campus with a degree in Liberal Arts. I am largely a self taught and experiential artist. I am continually trying to master a complicated process involving resins, oils, acrylics, paper, photography, metals and natural objects that are contained within my art.

Sherrod Blankner One way to describe what I'm trying to express in my paintings is empathy for the landscape. I grow deeply attached to familiar settings and have a hard time letting go of a beloved place. For example, every time I drive down Cedar Street to my studio, I feel a wave of affection for the empty gas station, the chunky fire department trials building, the humming Peet's coffeshop, and the undiscovered biotech building where I always find a parking space.I go out of my way to avoid ugly driving routes, but at the same time, I'm fascinated by the sometime charm of beaten down urban scenes.

I paint both lyrical rural vistas and burned out cityscapes to show the feelings that both can evoke. Buildings, an extension of human vision and effort, can exude human emotions — elegance, sadness, fatigue, strength, pride and more.

Debbie Claussen Debbie has enjoyed sketching since she was a small child. From the beginning, it was animals and people that were her favorite subjects. After she took a first place in a county-wide school art contest, there was no turning back.

She began painting in earnest with the difficult medium of porcelain painting over 30 years ago; learning the medium by rendering flowers. She studied porcelain painting with master artists from around the world, and has been teaching for over 15 years. She has exhibited her porcelain paintings in museum shows around the country. Over 15 years ago, Debbie added watercolor, colored pencils and oil painting to her list of accomplishments. She enjoys each medium for its own uniqueness and the way it impacts the final concept of the painting. Website: claussenart.com

Bernice Gross Bernice bases her quirky, nostalgic figurative paintings on found photographs and commercial images from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Her paintings incorporate collaged elements such as textured archival paper, fragments of antique lace tablecloths and doilies, and vintage jewelry and rhinestones to recall the bold colors and embellished clothing of mid-century suburban life.

Working en plein air, Bernice's landscape paintings record specific moments in the natural cycle, capturing the fresh scents, crisp air, and lush foliage of Northern California, the New England States, and the Canadian Rockies. Website: bernicegrossart.com

Gera Hasse “The Dada movement was a protest against the barbarism of World War I, the bourgeois interests that Dada adherents believed inspired the war, and what they believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society.” Well, hello! Much of this applies to today and my inner rumblings. While the Dadaists were political, I am not. I believe art, my art specifically, reaches for a deeper and more seminal part of the human level of interaction.While some of the pieces I create are busy and complex, there is a fundamental simplicity there also. Much of the underlying composition relates to compositions or elements I observed and liked in brush painting.Website: fourthstreetstudio.com/bio.php?artistId=3681

Ann Marie Hodrick Ann Marie Hodrick is the award winning designer behind Heart's Desire Jewelry. She lived in Oakland, CA where her true love for design and adornment brought about the creation of Heart’s Desire Jewelry. Ann Marie finds inspiration in the colors and textures of nature. She cherishes old jewelry parts as much as she adores keeping an eye on what’s current in fashion. Those inspirations mix together in a style that expresses itself in many lights…from vintage to modern…organic to graphic. No matter which muse is speaking to her, the result is always stylish. Ann Marie has shared her love of jewelry as editor of the Fashion Jewelry site at BellaOnline.com.Website:heartsdesirejewelry.com

Maggie HurleyI seem to be most content with a paintbrush in my hand. I went to school at the Laguna College of Art and Design before moving to San Francisco and then on to Berkeley, which I now call home.I like to draw or paint just about anything, from day dreams to a piece of fruit that looks too pretty to eat. I can’t seem to stick to one medium. Sometimes I like the ease of watercolor, or the texture of oil. Sometimes I like to get my fingers thick with clay.I find inspiration in the way light bounces off of skyscrapers and am equally enthralled by the views of clouds from airplane windows. My work celebrates the wonder in everyday things often taken for granted.Website: maggiehurley.com

Korianna KisielpriceThese are some of the paintings from the acrylic artist Korianna Kisielprice. Kori is a self taught painter who has shown her art throughout the Bay Area. While her style and subject matter varies she is drawn to vibrant colors and shows a skill for details whether landscape, architecture, vintage still life, or portraits.

Currently working with Bavrest on BMW paintings and showing with 4th Street Fine Art.

NuuHi, my name is Nuch. My passion for form, simplicity, and salient details has grown in me since I was an architecture student. It’s been years since I was an architect, but these passions have never left me. The first time I made a necklace as a gift for my aunt, unexpectedly, these dormant enthusiasms blossomed in me again. Since then for almost ten years, I’ve never stopped designing jewelry.It started by pure coincidence. I received a gift of a beautiful tourmaline necklace, which broke. I was determined to fix it myself, and took a basic beading class, then taught myself wire wrapping techniques. One thing led to another, and to my surprise, Designing and crafting jewelry has become my inspiring muse.The pioneer of modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, said “Less is More”. That’s what I’m trying to achieve in my jewelry designs – Simplicity for More…Creating elegant jewelry from the myriad simplicity of nature. I also love to fish on the weekend.

Cynthia Podren I have always wanted to paint and began dabbling about twenty years ago. In 2002, I suffered the biggest personal loss of my life and took up painting more intensively at that time. I paint mostly in oils, although I use watercolors when travelling. I paint plein air landscapes, and do studio work from my photographs, hoping to convey my feelings about these sites and the beauty of the ordinary.

Joanna Ruckman“I strive to create work that celebrates nature, culture, and the human experience.”I am completely enamored by our human obsession with creating things. I see design as an omnipresent opportunity to express and communicate. My journey is to find beauty and share it.I have been a designer and photographer for 20 years, and recently made the dramatic shift to digital. I have been experimenting and manipulating photos in and out of the darkroom since age 14. Now, with the limitless nature of digital art, I am able to combine images in ways I have long desired and even in ways I never imagined. I am currently working in several different formats, showing in diverse formal and alternative venues, and addressing social issues.Website: joannaruckman.com

ShawNshawNI grew up moving from city to city, state to state and finally country to country. I have learned new accents, new languages, new cities and new friends every few years. I am home everywhere and nowhere. In 1989, I saw the Berlin Wall fall behind the Iron Curtain in Poland, seeing the destruction of communism into true market capitalist freedom. Freedom is a major theme in my work as well as focusing on turning points in history. In the 1990s, I got my start painting academically at Indiana University. I had the chance to study my late professor Tom Thomas do his latest abstracts right in class, which greatly influenced my first styles and stretched me to redefine art -- the true purpose of an artist. In Spain, I studied masters like El Greco, Bosch, Velasquez and Goya in the world renowned Prado a full year and studied Islamic art, focused purely on geometry and calligraphy.Website: shawnshawn.co

Matthew SilverbergMatthew Silverberg is an artist working in traditional and new media. He teachesdigital printmaking at the Multimedia Arts Department at Berkeley City College, where he also has taught courses in contemporary color, information design, digital portfolio and art marketing. Previously he worked for many years as employee number five at Legato Systems, Inc., a Palo Alto startup. Matthewhas been represented by the SFMOMA—Artist Gallery, and he is active with the Achenbach Graphic Arts Council in San Francisco. he is now an active memberof the 4th Street Fine Art group in Berkeley. California.Website: matthewsilverberg.com

Valerie SobelColor is an essential element of my drawings as it is of my life. It has an exhilarating power over me. In 1994, when I had the privilege to see the early paintings of Kandinsky as well as the works of the Blue Ritter exhibited in Münich, I felt transported to a parallel universe of raw beauty, where explosions of colors set my mind on fire. In my drawings, color plays a determining role, bringing my characters to life.Art enables me to create my own little private utopia. The creatures inhabiting this world are the product of a universal fusion. There are no boundaries between the animal, the vegetal and the mineral kingdoms. Life is everywhere and evolution has taken place in total anarchy, free mingling for all based solely on the necessity of mutual attraction. There are no real laws of attraction except for their random nature. And so this is a world where distinctions of race, nation, religion, color, gender, size, shape etc, get blurred, become irrelevant in a way. At times the faces and bodies become a stage for contributing actors, the landscapes of fruitful collaborations. At times the inhabitants of this utopian world seem utterly confused or at least, less than in control of the situation.Website: valeriesobel.com

Hallie StrockI am particularly interested in the exploration of color, composition, and the relationship of colors to each other, be it through paint, pastel or fabric. In an essentially abstract mode, I use layers of color to depict structure and surface that take much of their impetus from landscape, architecture or still life. Color establishes the reference. The atmosphere and the colors of my environment always find their way into the piece. I often begin with a more traditional painting or drawing of landscape or architecture, and then "deconstruct" it, sometimes working from a pastel study completed en plein air. Many of my pieces are inspired from photos, drawings and other studies while traveling. My quilts allow me to explore color and composition in fabrics and other materials. Recently I have been working on the concept of pairs of paintings and quilts that work together.